Jack-o-Lantern Nebula Spotted by Spitzer Telescope
A carved-out cloud of gas and dust looks like a celestial jack-o’-lantern in this image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. A massive star — known…
Spitzer Space Telescope
Starry Region Bursting With Bubbles and Bow Shocks Spotted by Spitzer
This infrared image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope shows a cloud of gas and dust full of bubbles, which are inflated by wind and radiation…
Sixteen Incredible Images for Spitzer’s Sweet 16
NASA launched its Spitzer Space Telescope into orbit around the Sun on Aug. 25, 2003. Since then, the observatory has been lifting the veil on…
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope Gets a Rare Look at the Surface of a Rocky Exoplanet
A new study using data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope provides a rare glimpse of conditions on the surface of a rocky planet orbiting a…
Perfectly Sideways Galaxy Spied by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope
This image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope might look like a lightsaber floating in space, but it’s actually an entire galaxy viewed on its side….
Hubble and Spitzer Identify the Atmosphere of Mid-Size Planet
Two NASA space telescopes have teamed up to identify, for the first time, the detailed chemical “fingerprint” of a planet between the sizes of Earth…
Spitzer Space Telescope Captures Amazing Stellar Family Portrait
In this large celestial mosaic taken by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, there’s a lot to see, including multiple clusters of stars born from the same…
Spitzer Reveals Clues to How Ancient Galaxies Lit up the Universe
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed that some of the universe’s earliest galaxies were brighter than expected. The excess light is a byproduct of the…
Astronomers View Star Formation in the Central Molecular Zone
Stars form from the gas and dust in molecular clouds via a series of complex processes that are currently only partly understood, and the evolution…
Astronomers Discover Brown Dwarf Binary Star with Microlensing
Brown dwarfs are stars less massive than the sun and unable to burn hydrogen. They comprise (at least in mass) a bridge between planets and…
Spitzer Images Show Galaxies on the Cusp of Cosmic Collisions
Three images from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope show pairs of galaxies on the cusp of cosmic consolidations. Though the galaxies appear separate now, gravity is…
Spitzer Reveals That Silica is Formed When Massive Stars Explode
We are all, quite literally, made of star dust. Many of the chemicals that compose our planet and our bodies were formed directly by stars….
Spitzer Views Newborn Stars Blowing Bubbles in the Cat’s Paw Nebula
This image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Cat’s Paw Nebula, so named for the large, round features that create the impression of a…
Chandra Detects Diskless Young Stars in Serpens South Cluster
Stars frequently form in crowded environments. By combining the resources of multi-wavelength missions like Chandra in the X-ray and Spitzer in the infrared, astronomers are…
The 15 Greatest Discoveries From NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has spent 15 years in space. In honor of this anniversary, 15 of Spitzer’s greatest discoveries are featured in a gallery….
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope Still Going Strong After 15 Years
Initially scheduled for a minimum 2.5-year primary mission, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has gone far beyond its expected lifetime — and is still going strong…
Spitzer Observations of Binary Neutron Star Merger GW170817
GW170817 is the name given to a gravitational wave signal seen by the LIGO and Virgo detectors on 17 August 2017. Lasting for about 100…
Supernova Remnant HBH 3 -The Fading Ghost of a Long-Dead Star
Thin, red veins of energized gas mark the location of one of the larger supernova remnants in the Milky Way galaxy in this image from…